Adaptation

The question as to the relationship between art and politics is not only directed towards the outside. It also addresses the institution itself and its curatorial practice: therefore, the Prague-based exhibition-makers Zbyněk Baladrán and Vit Havránek see themselves more as inviters in this project: in a communal process, they not only develop the form, but also the main topic of “Adaptation” together with the artists – a laboratory for new paradigms, structures, hierarchies and forms of collaboration rather than an exhibition, a collective process that begins long before the opening and that will continue long after it has ended.

Alternative models of society and collaboration are the thematic bookends, which will also be put to the test. A collection of material put together by everyone will be constantly adapted, with groups arranging and rearranging themselves, a new creating joint and separate output. “Adaptation” creates an open space within the institutional art system, both for the artists and curators taking part and for visitors, who become co-authors. For the freedom of adaptation is the self-empowering instrument for the unsatisfied reader, recipient and spectator, to generate his or her own usable, useful meanings and connections. Like the famous “Merzbau” housing installations, the exhibition will always remain a suggestion, a snapshot, a changing art space and habitat in which utopian rules are adapted for the specific situation, time and place. And in which the art works remain independent, while at the same time forming part of a joint effort.